Most of the striking doctors take home less $100 (£77) a month, not nearly enough to buy food and groceries – or get to work.

Not long after the strike began their union leader, Dr Peter Magombeyi, was abducted for five days in mysterious circumstances – one of a number of abductions this year of those seen as critical of the government.

The authorities deny any involvement in these cases, but those taken are usually released after being beaten up and threatened.

Since then 448 doctors have been fired for striking and for violating a labour court ruling that ordered them back to work. Another 150 face still face disciplinary hearings.

Ten days ago, a journalist tweeted footage showing the deserted wards of Parirenyatwa Hospital, describing the scene as “empty and ghostly”.

Empty & Ghostly, this is Parirenyatwa Hospital this evening!

Only tired army doctors who are providing an auxiliary service.

Ward after ward, it was empty!

Not only doctors are off work, even the hard working nurses have left their stations due to wage incapacitation!

Senior doctors, who had been filling in for the junior colleagues by providing emergency services, have now also downed their stethoscopes and scalpels.

They are demanding that the government reinstate the fired doctors and meet their wage demands.

The strikes have crippled the health system, and nurses at municipal clinics are also not reporting for work as they are pressing for a living wage.

One nurse told me her transport costs alone gobble up half her salary.

‘Death traps’

It has worsened the conditions in a health sector that was already collapsing.

Senior doctors describe the public hospitals as “death traps”.

For months they have faced shortages of basics such as bandages, gloves and syringes. Some recently purchased equipment is substandard and obsolete, they say.

The government says it cannot afford to increase salaries. It is not only the doctors but the whole civil service that is pressing for pay increases, even though wages already account for more than 80% of the national budget.

Media captionScolastica Nyamayaro has had to choose between buying her medicine or food

But the workers representatives say it is a question of priorities. Top officials all drive top of the range luxury vehicles and regularly seek medical treatment abroad.

In September, Robert Mugabe, the country’s former president, died aged 95 in Singapore, where he had been receiving treatment since April.

Vice-President Constantino Chiwenga, the former army chief behind the military takeover that led to Mugabe’s overthrow two years ago, has just returned from four months of medical treatment in China.

The government says it will recruit medical staff from other organisations and from abroad. Cuba has over the years supplied Zimbabwe with doctors and specialists.

Billionaire’s lifeline

No-one knows how this will end.

UK-based Zimbabwean telecoms billionaire Strive Masiyiwa has offered to set up a 100m Zimbabwean dollar ($6.25m; £4.8m) fundto try to break the impasse.

It would, among other things, pay up to 2,000 doctors a little more than US$300 a month and provide them with transport to work for a period of six months.

There has been no reaction yet from the doctors.

The strike has divided Zimbabweans.

Tendai Biti, a former finance minister in a unity government and the deputy leader of the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), has called for an urgent review of doctors’ conditions of service.

“A country with a budget of Z$64bn can’t surely fail to resolve this… the issue here is leadership,” he said.

Image captionOther medics, some seen protesting here about Peter Magombeyi’s abduction, are also now not reporting for work

Analyst Stembile Mpofu says it is no longer a labour issue but a political one.

“It is difficult to find the doctors’ position as less heartless than that of the politicians as far as the people of Zimbabwe are concerned,” she says.

Many here, including the senior doctors’ association, have used the term “silent genocide” to describe the crisis.

So many are dying quietly. It’s not clear how many more people will continue to die as this stand-off nears its third month.